Enhancing the Class Curriculum with Virtual World

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Sep 17, 2008 - Enhancing the Class Curriculum with Virtual World Use. Cases for ... movement from print-based material towards digital and multi-media enriched material. ..... presented the material and navigated on a projected screen.
Enhancing the Class Curriculum with Virtual World Use Cases for Production and Logistics Annekatrin Erlenkötter ([email protected]) Claas-Michael Kühnlenz ([email protected]) Huey-Ru Miu ([email protected]) Franziska Sommer ([email protected]) Torsten Reiners ([email protected]) University of Hamburg, Institute of Information Systems, Hamburg, Germany Abstract: Virtual worlds can be used to spice up classes in the field of production and logistics at the University of Hamburg. Instead of presenting slides in a classroom, the classroom is taken into a virtual world – here Second Life – to visit several companies. In addition, the companies were chosen in a way, that each of them is unique in how they present themselves and how they transport the internal production process. The use cases show a new form of building and presenting learning material, i.e. with respect to interactivity and immersion.

1 Introduction In general, lectures are based on presentations using blackboard, slides or some (inter)active media like movies, software packages or simulations, whereas interactivity with student is seldom part of the classroom experience, especially with larger classes. It is not uncommon, that undergraduate classes might have several students. Here, improved teaching methods like the beer game (Wikipedia (2008a), MIT Forum (2005)) or group work are not an option anymore and even the dialogue with the lecturer becomes more difficult, i.e. as students are not used to speak in front of larger groups. Some alternatives are shown by Quast and Reiners (2007), were entertainment components or various software (internet) gadgets for communication and improved learning material are used. E-learning and distance education complements the traditional classroom teaching, especially with the movement from print-based material towards digital and multi-media enriched material. With various means of hybrid and blended learning the students can chose their learning experience with respect to tools, content and speed. Several communication channels allow participation in the classroom or group-work, even though most are synchronous, so that answers are delayed. Unfortunately, this social constructivist learning is limited as most e-Learning platforms are text or menu based, non-adaptive and not particularly well suited to facilitating interactive learning experiences; see Darbyshire (2005). On the other hand, virtual spaces offer distance education students alternative opportunities for collaboration with their peers, and immersion in rich, visually interactive and diverse learning experiences; see Marshall (2008). In this contribution, we suggest the usage of virtual worlds to spice up classes and demonstrate examples how these can be used in the field of production and logistics class at the University of Hamburg. The elearning/Internet-hype provided several technological – this includes hard- and software – innovations supporting the lecture and knowledge transfer; there is still space for improvements. One of our main concerns is the student as – in most cases – the passive receiver instead of actively involved in producing content and individual impulses for new ideas. Instead of reading and listening to the lecture (cognitive domain), they need to feel and experience the material (affective domain) and, therefore, achieve further educational objectives. Virtual worlds can provide experiences where students virtually are in a workshop, tour or meeting without having to leave their home and thus, for many, mediate distance. There is already evidence to suggest that virtual simulations can create a sense or feel of what the reality would be like. Furthermore, virtual worlds are increasingly being used for engineering, large construction, land transformation, intricate operations, demonstration of various medical procedures; see Gregory and Smith (2008). Virtual worlds might not have the best reputation but this mainly results from the lack of ideas. “There’s been a lot of negative press about Second Life lately,” said “CSI” creator Anthony Zuiker. “I think that’s because a lot of companies are cutting big checks into Second Life and there’s no real application in mind.” (Hillis 2007). Virtual worlds have to compete with the Internet and the numerous applications. Therefore, virtual worlds have to be seen as a platform for first movers trying to identify the best possible choice for the future. We describe an idea for e-learning as well as a classroom presentation, i.e., how virtual worlds can be used – by students and lecturers – to motivate and to become active in terms of contributing ideas and material to the curriculum; see also Section 4. In Section 2, we discuss Second Life with respect to prejudices and usability. We continue with an overview of four contraire approaches how a manufacturing plant could be realized in Second Life. Before concluding the contribution, we describe the curriculum integration as it was done at the University of Hamburg

and discuss the main advantage of virtual worlds and why it is important to rather start a second identity now than later.

2 Second Life: The Platform for Visualization Philip Rosendale from Linden Lab developed Second Life, which later triggered the hype about virtual worlds. After the first beta test in 2002 and its public opening in 2003, the innovative second (virtual) reality became a focus of most media from common press to scientific journals; see Second Life (2008). Second Life consists of so-called islands – a virtual area measuring around 65536 sqm – where residents with own property use so-called avatars to build anything from realistic to abstract constructions while retaining the rights to their digital creations. Second Life’s success can be related to the immense possibilities to design an individual avatar and buy territory on one of the islands, building new homes, businesses1, educational institutions2, recreation areas, museums3, historical places, governments and embassies, or fantasy locations; see also Second Life Grid (2008), Second Life Wiki (2008) or Tapley (2007) for an introduction and further discussion about the development. Here, we concentrate on three arguments often used to criticize virtual worlds and, in specific, Second Life; i.e. with focus on e-learning and class integration.

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Second Life is a ghost world: An avatar can feel very lonely while cruising through most islands; see Hillis (2007) as well as Mulder and Tapley (2007) for an extended discussion. Even though Second Live has more than 13.000.000 inhabitants, it seems to be a coincidence to meet somebody besides the main party or shopping locations. Some islands attract people by offering Linden Dollars or have rare highlights (or even both), others have some drop-ins over the day or peaks during invited sessions, meetings or events. Second Life has about 14000 islands of 65536 sqm, so that theoretically one avatar is within 71 sqm. In contrast to the registered numbers, there are an average of 45000 avatars online at the same time (and 800.000 within 30 days), which calculates to around 21000 sqm for one avatar or three per island; see also the statistics at Second Life (2008). And that sounds really lonely considering that many avatars meet at the same place at the same time. Let us take a short excurse. The Internet has estimated 15-30 billion web pages and around 500 million hosts; with large deviations due to the difficulty to count everything in a huge and dynamic network; see Pandia Search Engine News (2008). Nevertheless, estimate of users per month is 1.3 billion – and not necessarily at the same time; see Internet World Stats (2008). This calculates to 2.6 per host or less than 0.06 users per web site. Compared to the Internet, Second Life is not empty. But in Second Life we are aware of the users being online and at the same location. On a web site, we have fewer possibilities to verify simultaneous access or even start a communication about the content. Exceptions are, for example, Weblin, where users can have avatars being visible during surfing the web (Weblin (2008)) and social networking sites for dating. Most important, no one generally cares as most user use the Internet like an interactive and interconnected book rather than having a direct social contact – at least while browsing. In conclusion, Second Life might be a ghost world, but it is more about the user who needs to become aware of the media and the manifold content. And Second Life is pretty habituated compared to the Internet.

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How to find locations: Using media in class primarily requires that it can be found or is produced before-hand; besides having further pedagogical and technical properties. And with virtual worlds, the difficulty known from learning objects increases almost exponentially. While educators have a personal interest to mark their objects with meta-data, most of the content in Second Life is build by the average user who does not necessarily know about meta-data or how to improve the ease of access. Note that Linden Lab also needs to improve the search functionality as this is far beyond the known state-of-art. Furthermore, it seems that projects and locations are not well documented outside the virtual world. For example, the activities of funny-frisch – a large snack provider in Germany – are mentioned on their homepage with one sentence and a link to Second Life. No screenshots or documentations for a very well-done location. For most companies, Second Life is often used for branding and marketing, so it should have a wide coverage in real-world as well to be successful in the beginning.

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Replacing real-world education: Learning is not about applying one method but to find the best method to teach a subject. Virtual worlds combine several features and can be used to increase the participation and interactivity of learners; especially in courses with participants not being at the same location; see Section 4. With virtual worlds, we can enhance the learning material but should not start to transfer everything. Many objects are not made for the third dimension and far better handled in learning

http://slbusinesscommunicators.pbwiki.com/Companies+in+Second+Life http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Institutions_and_Organizations_in_SL 3 http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_museums_and_galleries_in_Second_Life 2

management systems than in virtual worlds. Over the next years, the design of learning material has to be re-thought to define new ways of integration for the best use of all media. Second Life is often used by companies as a platform to build a virtual representation for branding, marketing and showing the advantages of their products. Several companies have modeled their assortment of goods in Second Life aiming for a fast distribution among the communities. Especially during the starting period of Second Life, the so-called freebies were popular and exchanged regularly. Later, an almost uncountable number of shops opened, selling their self-designed products or redistribute other items as eye-catchers for free. The main disadvantage is – if we ignore any issues about copyrights, plagiarism etc. – that avatars rather visit shopping areas than going to an island offering no further exhibits. Therefore, companies started to offer added values like games (funny-frisch with soccer and the German Post with winter games), social areas like Dell, political messages (Double Happiness), detailed product descriptions and environmental integration (Enel), new technology (TÜV Nord; name of the island in Second Life is TUV Nord) or welcome islands for Second Life (Ben and Jerry’s). We should mention that the press continuously reports about companies leaving Second Life, but does not mention that some projects were only planned to be temporarily and that more companies join than leave.

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Production in Second Life: Four Examples

With respect to the anticipated integration in learning environments, we defined several criteria before we even started our search in Second Life. The main criterion was the visualization of the manufacturing process rather than the final products, buildings, branding or marketing events. Some companies designed atmospheric islands around their brand; e.g. Nissan build a huge vending machine for their cars (The Electric Sheep Company (2006)) or Enel, who visualized their energy resources in an educational scenario (Enel (2008)). As described above, most companies use Second Life or other virtual environments rather for marketing and presentation of their brands (N.N. (2008) and TWT Interactive (2008)), the number of manufacturing plants is very limited. We selected four very different approaches how the manufacturing process from resources to (real life) products can be visualized in a virtual world environment. In addition, the diverse paradigms give us the opportunity for different integration scenarios in a classroom or virtual learning environment. The companies are funny-frisch (snack producer), Ben & Jerry’s (ice cream), Fiat Brazil (cars), and Double Happiness (jeans), Note that we first describe the islands and summarize the outcome afterwards in a discussion about their qualification for (e)learning settings. 3.1 funny-frisch (Snack) The funny-frisch-island in Second Life was opened in June 2007. The company describes its own island as a “virtual world around sport, games, dancing, snacks and, naturally, about potatoes and chips”, see funny-frisch (2008) and also Figure 1 for a screenshot of the island map.. In real life funny-frisch is a snack producer with headquarter in Cologne, Germany. The whole island is based on a very detailed design where the company’s logo was used for the look of the island. The green part contains sporting areas, beach, green landscapes, potato fields and the home of the funny-frisch mascot named Max Frisch. The red part accommodates the production plant for the potato chips and the funny-frisch shop.

Figure 1: Overview of funny-frisch island

Figure 2: Farm land for potatoes

The island offers several exhibits to attract and bind visitors for a longer time period. For example, the avatar can explore several games like soccer or slalom where the avatar can earn 1$LD for every goal, visit the snack-shop to buy (fat-free) virtual chips or learn about the manufacturing process. We should point out that the revenues of all virtual sales are donated to the project “Fit am Ball – Der Schul-Cup von funny-frisch”; see funny-frisch Presseportal (2008). The main motivation of the company for the island was – among other things – the establishment of the brand funny-frisch as a virtual snack throughout Second Life, to gain experience with the mode of communication, and propagate the community service of funny-frisch. The avatar Crispi Carter, who

holds the position as the island manager of funny-frisch, states that virtual worlds allow an innovative concept for advertisement, product placement and surveys with costs similar to classical websites; see Completa (2007). The factory has a very detailed design. Funny-frisch provides insight into the whole process of the chips production and implements the complete process starting from potato delivery up to the packaging of the produced chips. In addition, the scenario reflects a supply chain, where all steps from material delivery, production and delivery to customers are given. Figure 2 shows the fields where the potatoes are harvest by the avatars as well as the delivery area of the production plant. A tractor is pulling full trailers to the factory where they are unloaded and transported on conveyer belts to the processing area; see Figure 3. The visitor must enter the building through a washing room to follow required hygiene regulations like washing hands and wearing a lab coat and cap.

Figure 3: Production plant with agricultural equipment

Figure 4: Processing the potatoes

The processing line is divided into seven different areas each labelled with signs to access German notecards with further information about the specific production step. First, the potatoes are cleaned, peeled, sliced into the form of chips, fried and seasoned for the taste, packed into the typical wrapper as well as verified for errors like leakage. After a further random quality check, the snacks are ready to be delivered to the shopping area. In the manufacturing, some stations allow interaction where the avatar operates the machines making 1$LD for every 15 minutes. The visitor can either check the quality of the potato chips or choose a seasoning before they are packed in potato chip bags. Attached to the production plant, the attendee can visit the laboratory offering very detailed information about nutrition facts and possible risks for people with allergies. For most products the ingredients are shown allowing, e.g., diabetics, to preselect possible kinds of potato chips. The laboratory also verifies the quality by sampling some of the produced bags. A truck being parked behind the production plant, transports the bags to the shop were each bag is sold for 1$LD. 3.2

Ben & Jerry’s (Ice Cream)

The 1978 founded ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings, Inc. engaged the Electric Sheep Company to build their presence in Second Life. For altogether less than $500,000 they build an educating and entertaining island with an environmentally friendly factory of the future in the colorful Ben & Jerry’s theme; see Figure 5 and Second Life News Network (2007). Note that the whole factory is using natural elements to power it: wind turbines, solar panels and biogas. The visitor can even help to produce the biogas by collecting meadow muffins and deploying them in the biogas digester in a predefined time. These brown muffins are spread around the factory on the cow meadows. Each day, the one who has collected the most muffins in one run of this game wins 1000 $LD. The continuous flow of visitors results from being a starting point and orientation island for new avatars as well as the chance to win $LD. They achieved 20,000 visitors in the first month without any promotion; see Second Life News Network (2007). In addition to this, Ben & Jerry’s donates every day 1000 $LD to the WWF organization and provides additional WWF boxes in the factory so that visitors can donate.

Figure 5: Ben & Jerry’s Factory

Figure 6: Freezing Process

The factory shows the whole manufacturing process of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in a detailed animation. The visitor can see how the ice cream mixture is mixed from several ingredients and heated to neutralize bacteria. Boards on the walls explain the individual steps. The fruit ingredients are cultivated in greenhouses – using recycled wastewater – to irrigate fruits. After adding the fruits, cooling the mix and putting in extras like chocolate chips or nuts, the ice cream is filled into pint containers. The last step is freezing the packaged ice cream in the spiral hardener; see Figure 6. The termoaccoustic freezer, an alternative environmentally friendly way of freezing (Ben & Jerry’s research results are shown here as prototypes). The whole factory uses underwater reservoirs and ice ponds to store heat and cold from machines and seasons to re-distribute when necessary. Note that there are some drawbacks of the design. Some details, i.e. the signs, are difficult to see as the height of the construction is huge compared to the avatar requiring too much camera handling. In addition, some animation doesn’t work very well, e.g. sometimes the ice cream drops beside the pint containers. A small drawback is the support. Nobody of Ben & Jerry’s or Electric Sheep Company is present in Second Life. Visitors are left alone with their questions and especially people who are new to Second Life could be trapped, because the orientation island doesn’t explain how to teleport away from the Ben & Jerry’s island. Also more interactivity would be good for the factory. A little influence in the production would be great for the visitor. Furthermore, the video panels should show more informative spots instead of advertising. 3.3

Fiat Latino America (Automobile)

Fiat was founded in Turin in 1899 and is currently one of the world’s established automobile manufacturers with factories in over ten countries. Since 2007 Fiat also owns a virtual factory on their island Fiat Ilha Oficial – Fiat Latino America in Second Life. As the title implies, it only addresses a limited target group, the Latin Americans and especially the Brazilians. It seems to be odd, that a global player like Fiat uses an international accepted virtual world only to reach one part of the potential customers; even thought Brazil is constantly among the most active residents by nation in Second Life (Second Life Research (2008)) and with 607598 sold cars in 2007, Fiat is the top-selling automobile manufacturer in Brazil; see Perlini (2008). To reach their second biggest market worldwide, Fiat Brazil commissions an agency to create their presence in Portuguese and in Spanish (late 2008). Their island does not only house the factory but also areas dedicated to the culture and history of Fiat, the presentation of an electronic car and the possibility to make test drives. However, the element that lets this island stand out against other ones is the factory; see Figure 7 and 8.

Figure 7: Fiat’s factory

Figure 8: Quality checks

Entering the building the main issue becomes quickly obvious. As written on the official website of Fiat: “Protecting the environment is one of Fiat’s main goals, that has made available its abilities and technological progress for years, and has tried to increase public awareness: safeguarding the environment is a major challenge that concerns the culture and behaviour of society as a whole”; see Fiat (2008). So the whole manufacturing plant is primarily centred on environment and how it can be protected during the production process. The interior consists of an assembly line surrounded by grass, trees and little white clouds as being situated in a meadow; see Figure 8. This unrealistic style continues while going into details. The aim of this factory is not to reproduce a traditional machine, but to create something special und interesting using the new media. “With different and joyful stations, we were able to communicate the fine points of technology involved in our Brazilian plant”, explained Jeff Paiva, the Social Media Manager at AgênciaClick. Hence, a sushi cook cuts car tires from a big cylinder, the tires are attached like in a pit stop in Formula One, a painter re-varnishes the cars with a paint-brush and a paint bucket, and the quality of the car is tested with a giant microscope. Although being anything but realistic, the factory is still able to transfer information to the visitor. Next to the main stations, there are information boards with real pictures of the production and the product as part of a corresponding reproduction in Second Life embedded in a “frame of nature”. The content is always about the environment and how the Brazilian Manufacturing contributes to protect it at those specific points.. 3.4 Double Happiness (Jeans Producer and Art Project) The manufacture of Double Happiness Jeans is located on the Eyebeam Island in Second Life; see Double Happiness Jeans (2008) and Zimmer (2007). The factory building is near the sea with something like a little port surrounded by houses and land given to the employees. The original Double Happiness manufacture is an artist' s studio at Eyebeam New York City; see Hafner (2008).

Figure 9: Double Happiness in Second Life

Figure 10: Production process with avatars

The factory building looks old and the surrounding seems not to be very beautiful and clean like the other factories being described before. Walking into building reveals an office, an employee’s room with some food waste and cockroaches on it and in the middle is the hall with the machines. Without workers, nothing will happen. Besides clicking the red lights on the machines, which will pop up information about the working step and showing the options for the specific machine, there is nothing interactive for the user. In case of an external order, the machines are manned with avatars (employees). The customers, who are located in the studio in New York, choose the size, cut, style ... of the jeans they want and tell it to the employees in Second Life via microphone. The employees in Second Life have to click the right choices while the order is running through every single step of the production line. After a final quality check, which ensures that the order is correctly completed, the produced jeans is printed on tyvek material using a large printer in real. The pieces are cut out and be glued together. The real life happening is shown in the virtual world using video streaming and, concurrent, the customers, staff and other people in real life can see the execution of the order in Second Life. Double Happiness is neither a famous brand nor a real factory. It is a project of artists around Dr. Stephanie Rothenberg and Jeffrey Crouse. This project does not intend to make profit. Supreme Hoodoo (Jeffrey Crouse) says that they are all artists and the performance is important to them. They want people to think about the concept, the factory and how it is realized. Virtual production is possible, but not necessary. Two videos from their web site are campaigns to hire workers in Second Life whereas a third one is about 10 simple steps to your very own virtual sweatshop with telematic manufacturing. The 10 steps are: (1) choose a virtual world (2) create a virtual team (3) develop a business model (4) buy virtual land (5) build a virtual factory (6) hire avatars as workers (7) conduct training sessions (8) build a real world storefront (9) begin telematic production (10) pay your workers. But why do they call it sweatshop? A definition of sweatshop is: “A sweatshop is a working environment with very difficult or dangerous conditions, usually where the workers have few rights or ways to address their

situation. This can include exposure to harmful materials, hazardous situations, extreme temperatures, or abuse from employers. Sweatshop workers are often forced to work long hours for little or no pay, regardless of any laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labor laws may also be violated.”; see Wikipedia (2008b). The environment in Second Life is clean and secure, but avatars working there for a piece of SL-land and 200$LD an hour, which are only about 90 US Cents. This earning is pretty good in Second Life, but nothing compared to the real life wages in the US. Some people might say it is only a game and only avatars are working. But behind every avatar there is a human, who sits in front of his/her computer and clicks buttons. And as they have shown in the video, the person could be a child too. This might let people think about some political problems. Although Second Life is only for people over 18 years, there is no age verification needed. It also should inspire people to think about outsourcing politics and its consequences. Selling a pair of jeans for 32 to 45 USD is under market price, but still enough profit to make. Another point is that there is no focus on environmental pollution in virtual production. But at least the final product is a Real Life product, which has to be produced somewhere not only in a virtual world. Regarding to e-learning Double Happiness offers something like a workshop to build up a sweatshop in a virtual world. Even though they demonstrate a critical perspective, they also demonstrate that it works. People, who visit the factory and watch a job, can learn how to make jeans. Beginning with the loom to the finished wearable jeans, every single step is shown by the machines. Although Double Happiness has just a printer in Real Life, the factory in Second Life looks the way a real factory would look like. The employees and the owner are very cooperative and take time to answer questions of the visitors. They are not workers in a real factory. Therefore, they are not able to answer detailed technical questions about production.

Remarks to the Scenarios 3.5 All examples demonstrate that production processes and use cases can be visualized in Second Life, from a realistic look (funny-frisch, Double Happiness), comic look with real processes (Ben & Jerry’s) up to metaphoric images (Fiat). The intended message varies from promoting products (funny-frisch, Ben & Jerry’s), production processes with respect to the environment (Fiat) and the social and political side-effects (Double Happiness). For the classroom, we used the different settings to start discussion about why the final design was chosen and what are the effects on the learning process. Is it preferable to have a realistic design vs. a fantasy setting if both present the same idea? With respect to production and logistics, we discussed the advantages of having Second Life compared to provide videos or going on excursions, and how it can be used in a classroom with students from many fields. All companies were given in only one (local) language, so that the understanding was limited. Even though it is a general problem with Second Life to have the same information in several languages as all avatars see the same at the same time, some sites at least allowed changing the texts by passing out translations on notecards or changing the textures. From a pedagogical view, it is not yet possible to have students visit the sites by themselves without further explanations. Finally, all courses should be guided, if possible by someone from the island explaining details and background information.

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Integration in Classroom Scenarios

We provided several learning experiences: Preliminary experiments were done with invited guests who were able to use the technology to present slides including communication over voice and instant message. Here, the interactivity was limited to questions and later discussions with participating students and experts from various fields, all being distant in terms of no parallel classroom session but only being in Second Life. Next, a lecture merging both worlds was conducted. Second Life was used as the media to present the material, whereas only a small percentage given as slides, as well as the platform to have more than half of the students to be in the lecture. In the classroom, the in-world view was projected, while the lecturer controlled the avatar and transferred his voice via headset to Second Life. In addition, the classroom was streamed to Second Life to allow distance student to provide a window to the real world and an in-class experience. It proved to be a perfect setting for synchronous blended learning without any barriers: everyone could communicate with each other by using headsets. Virtual worlds combine features from e-learning, distant education and real-classes. Students can participate from any place while still being able to interact and communicate with other learners at the same time. The lecture could take advantage of the virtual worlds with respect to several features: (Interactivity) The learner has to navigate in and interact with the learning material, compared to flipping through slides or books. 3Dscenarios allow free exploration and invite to investigate all details similar to computer adventure games where the learner uses objects to solve tasks; for example producing the correct jeans as it is done at Double Happiness. (Communication) Besides classic communication means like messages, chat, voice, mail and object transfer, virtual worlds learners can be at the same location at the same time so that communication is rather synchronous and allows seeing the communication partner. Even though this is also possible with video and voice

conferences, virtual worlds extend the impression by using 3D-avatars for gestures and inclusion of the environment. This can be used to demonstrate objects or processes using 3D models. For a lecturer, the multiplicity of communication channels provides a high degree of freedom for choosing the best way to address the students. While the lecturer presents the material, all learners can ask questions by chat without interrupting the course. (Collaboration) In virtual worlds, group work is as easy as in real life. Learners can work at the same time on the same project. If the task is about designing a house, one learner can start with walls, the other is building a roof and the next one is already creating the interior design. Whenever changes are applied, all participating learners can see the outcome. (Creativity) Virtual worlds are not restricted by natural laws like gravity or oxygen. Theoretical material can be expresses without restrictions in a 3D-space, especially including dynamic elements. The construction could be realistic (and be used for simulation or training, e.g., firemen) or abstract like visualizing a specific functionality. Ben & Jerry’s demonstrated that real processes can be presented in an appealing format to attract potential learners; i.e. to learn the production process. (Meta-medial) The term represents the possibility to use all kinds of media from slides, audio, chat, 3D-objects, video, …, but to go even further: Instead of consuming the presented information, the students can dive into the material by interactively using the material. This immersive experience extends the learning experience, helps to memorize the content and to experience different roles and views. We used Second Life in lecture in the area of Operations Research, Logistics, Production and Information Science. Here, we set a further focus on companies and their production as well as the supply chain describing the flow of information and goods. The learning material is given in form of scripts and slides, sometimes incorporating other media like interactive software or movies. Especially the manufacturing process can be visualized by videos showing the machines, ingredients, involved personnel and the organization of the whole process. Unfortunately, videos are not interactive and do hide details, such that an inspection of class-related specifica is not really possible. If we consider different disciplines of students in the class, the interest varies from technical components of a machine (engineer) to the key figures of the process like the outcome per day (business student). The video can also be embedded in the digital learning material with further annotations, but students will still experience a media break and the drawback of not being in control as the video which can be seen as static in its structure. Specialized applications or interactive animations can be used but imply either further investment or complex interfaces to combine all perspectives. The examples described above are used in the classroom. The freedom with respect to the exploration by the students was motivating and they took a closer look, i.e. analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the process. Even though most questions and comments were related to Second Life and the limitations of interactivity at the current development stage, it was interesting to observe the understanding of interwoven processes and the understanding, how a manufacturing process or supply chain looks like. In addition, it is important, that students got interested and highly motivated to use Second Life for a project, where they have to build their own manufacturing process. In conjunction to the decision process about the kind of product to produce, four students started to build a bottling plant for a University of Hamburg soft drink from scratch. The background knowledge was researched by reading scientific literature as well as viewing documentation videos in that field. Within a few months, they implemented the whole facility including the scripting of special events; e.g. changing machine parameters or animation of the bottles. The project is a required course for students in the Information Systems field but is generally about writing a Java or Web application involving project design and programming. Projects in Second life fulfill the same criteria: they had to manage the project, design the software and its interface, and implement everything in form of a 3D-model. Furthermore, they also have to write code for the processes and interactivity with avatars. Here, the results exceeded the general outcome due to the fact that all students enjoyed the new media and were far more motivated. Other comments were about the immediate results in Second Life, feedback from visitors and the supervisor as they could monitor the process at any time and the chance to achieve something not possible using other software packages. Figure 11 shows three projects in Second Life, which were all realized by students. This is the container terminal to demonstrate logistics processes (top left, see also Burmester et al. (2008)), a pharmacy(top right) for queuing theory – students can modify the kind of queue, parameters for the arrival distribution as well as the people working behind the desk – and the bottle plant from the outside and the machines itself (lower photos). The projects are due in December, but already used within lectures and presentations to demonstrate Second Life as well as processes in Production and Logistics.

Figure 11: Examples for Production and Logistics in Second Life, all realized by students of the University of Hamburg: Container terminal (top left), queuing model (top right), bottling plant (lower row)

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Conclusion

With respect to e-learning, Second Life – or virtual worlds in general – offers new opportunities to present learning material. Depending on the kind of content, the complexity might be higher and it takes more time to realize a complete scenario. On the other side, a well designed location allows numerous perspectives and interactivity with the learner. In our case, Second Life was integrated in the classroom setting, where the lecturer presented the material and navigated on a projected screen. Nevertheless, students joint the class from home having the same view in Second Life, while the voice chat was used to transfer the audio from the classroom. For the class, the learning material – the content in Second Life – was not generated but being collected prior to the semester start. Having a focus on production and logistics, we have chosen four companies which visualized their production process in different ways. Each session, one company was visited and explained while presenting the theoretical background. Note that in real life, visits always imply preparation, time for bringing students out to the manufacturing plant and costs. Furthermore, the safety on a trip has to be guaranteed. In Second Life, this is straight forward as the software is free and students can teleport to the location. The used cased showed that students are highly motivated. In the beginning, it might be the new media and escaping from the general classroom setting. But students also realize the potential given by the extra dimension. After concluding the session, they are interested in using the technology to design their own content and extending the learning material pool. Furthermore, the usage of avatars helped some students to be more active in class; i.e. asking questions using the chat system.

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References

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